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Finding a good front end solution for a semi single page web application

I am in middle of decision making about what technique or library should I use in front end for a typical web application. Major section of this application is done with ASP.NET MVC with full back end approach. So very little front end development and Ajax calls exists except for cascading drop downs or implementing auto-complets. Every operations are done via server post backs. When you do a CRUD or other operations your request is sent to server, then the result is rendered in server then returned to client and finally is shown. With this manner, front end can not be complicated very much. Pages can not have too many elements and//or too many operations. For large operations, more than one page is needed. A page for main operation then a page for sub-operation that typically is navigated from a main list page.

But the problem began from where that some page are wanted to have more than one operation. For example a page for CRUD some models and some sub-pages in it for complementary operations. Supposing that no post-back is allowed here, we would need front end development here. Interacting with DOM and reading/updating them needs plenty jQuery code and also need few server APIs and ajax calls to them. As much as the pages goes larger and need for interaction with user gets higher, for example getting user's confirmation or opening more dialog boxes, volume and complexity of front end code increases. So need of decreasing complexity and development time arises.

Here we have 3 options. First, do not allow much front end development and handle all the application with back end MVC only. Front end pages will be simple this way. Pages can not have more than one operation and every operation will cause a post back. Number of total pages will decrease as each single operation need a separate page.

Second we can allow multi-operation pages but use no ajax calls. That means jQuery is used to opening dialog boxes and getting user data but instead of using ajax, the form is posted to the server so a post-back occurs. This technique have inflexibility because it not easy to show dialog boxes or getting confirmations from user. Everything is posted to server, then possible errors are detected then error messages are sent back to the client. Also no state can be maintained. After page is returned from server, active controls or even data that was entered in inputs will be lost. Because of these in-flexibilities this technique is not applicable very much.

Third technique is to get help from JavaScript libraries and frameworks developed for this problem. This way all functionality we need for front end, including good user interaction, low code complexity and low implement time (except for learning time and setup time) is reached. Cons is learning time, setup time and overhead that it may produce.

If we go for third solution, a good choice is to use MVC/MVVM js frameworks that are mostly used for SPAs. Our goal is also is SPA but only for some sections of the web application not all of them. Famous js frameworks for SPAs are Angular.js and Ember.js. But they are too large for our problem. So a smaller one must be selected from several comparisons including this, this and this. Form them I feel that backbone.js (MVP) and knockout.js (MVVM) are better choices. Backbone.js uses more familiar pattern that is MVP and I read somewhere that knockout.js development is slow and community is getting decreasing. So backbone.js could be final choice.

Update

After advocating wiht my friend I decided to add a 4th solution: doing front end manipulations with pure jQuery/ajax code. This code may be lengthy but have less overhead than employing a SPA framework like angular.js or backbone.js.

Hi shahin, glad to see your comments everytime. Also heared from another friend that Angular 2 is a better choice for many situations. By Angular I get encouraged to use use Node.js (MEAN) for the back end too.